We participated in bio.academany.org 's HTGAA program. It has been amazing, and exhausting, and I'm sad that the 2016 class is almost over.

We hosted OpenBio Codefest 2016. The most focused and productive group of developers I've ever run into.

Some of our members attended HOPEXI where the bio presence has been growing nicely. I'm ooking forward to 2018!

We participated in CGSR's Independent Biotechnology:Innovation-regulation workshop. It was a great event, and I hope that the conversation continues.

Some of our members attended Biohack The Planet, which was fantastic, and I hope that it becomes a regular event. (Ideally one that is scheduled to proceed or follow SynbiobetaSF just a *little* more closely in the future.)

For me, the best part was interacting with other spaces. We got a ton of help and support from the folks at BioCurious, CCL, Genspace, and the-odin, and a bunch of great advice from Sebastian. This is a wonderful community, and we are truly grateful to be able to be a part of it.

Stuff that I didn't get to attend this year, but hear was great:

Synthetic Bio presence at SXSW

SynbiobetaSF (This is the first year I had to miss it)

BioHacker village at DefCon

Looking forward to seeing y'all in 2017!

-Dave

On Saturday, December 31, 2016 at 5:03:21 PM UTC-5, Kevin Chen wrote:

OH YEAH! How could I miss that one? I heard that was a good time, and will be watching to get it in my calendar for next year. :)

On Saturday, December 31, 2016 at 1:48:23 PM UTC-5, Koeng wrote:

BioHack The Planet conference was this year as well, which was a great event for meeting other people in the community

On Saturday, December 31, 2016 at 7:54:05 AM UTC-8, Kevin Chen wrote:

Hi all!

It's that time of the year again! Anyone have reflections for the past year? Big wins for DIYBio in 2016? Excited for something coming up next year?

Here are a few of my highlights off the top of my head:

At Bricobio we finally found some physical space to start a lab (woo! hometeam)

Hi, Sorry for not having any job offer, but I would like to know how you got your first

remote job? What experience aside from Python do you think would be especially useful for a

career such as yours. Is it easy to get part time?

cheers & happy holidays

/bjorn

On Saturday, December 31, 2016 at 12:59:04 AM UTC, Susan Tan wrote:

Hey All,

I've been lurking quietly on the mailing list for the past 4 years.

I'm looking for full stack software freelance jobs. After 2 years in the cloud computing industry, I left my previous (all-remote) Python job in Cisco in August 18, 2016 in search of a team making tangible products. My experience has been in APIs, web applications in Django, Flask, rest client libraries, single-page dashboards, and command line tools. I've worked at Rotten Tomatoes (1 year), Piston (1 year) and then at Cisco (1 year) after Piston got acquired in June 2015. Open source projects that I've volunteered on as a technical contributor in the past include openhatch.org, django 1.7, 18F projects.

I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area, I can work remotely. If you have a project in mind, let me know and we can discuss. I prefer to program primarily in Python, my favorite programming language.

I'm looking for full stack software freelance jobs. After 2 years in the cloud computing industry, I left my previous (all-remote) Python job in Cisco in August 18, 2016 in search of a team making tangible products. My experience has been in APIs, web applications in Django, Flask, rest client libraries, single-page dashboards, and command line tools. I've worked at Rotten Tomatoes (1 year), Piston (1 year) and then at Cisco (1 year) after Piston got acquired in June 2015. Open source projects that I've volunteered on as a technical contributor in the past include openhatch.org, django 1.7, 18F projects.

I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area, I can work remotely. If you have a project in mind, let me know and we can discuss. I prefer to program primarily in Python, my favorite programming language.

Depending on what you currently have access to you can extract the DNA yourself and create a PCR product which you can then clean up and send off for sequencing along with the primers you used to amplify it.

If I'm amplifying something out of E.coli I tend to just do a boiling lysis (colony in a PCR tube with H2O and 10-15 mins at 95C +) then use a couple of microlitres of the supernatant of that in a PCR reaction as template.

Seems hugely overkill that they are offering a full on premium extraction just for that (sales rep bumping up the invoice maybe?)...

Design primers as Roninlaw mentions above. I tend to order mine from Eurofins Genomics / MWG (whatever they're called these days) they're based in southern germany but the DHL or FedEx things to me in England within a couple of days so fairly handy.

I normally expect spend 2 or 3 GBP per primer.

The PCR product/reaction can then be cleaned up using a kit like https://www.promega.co.uk/products/dna-purification-quantitation/dna-fragment-purification/wizard-sv-gel-and-pcr-clean_up-system/ (that's the one I use, there is a method for this process in sambrooks/maniartis but it's more trouble than it's worth vs just paying for a kit, that one is 75GBP list price for 50 preps so that works out to about £1.50 per prep).

Then send that cleaned up reaction and some of each primer as per the sequencing company's requirements. One run of sanger sequencing tends to cost anything like 5 - 10 GBP. The pricing tends to get a bit better if you pay for several in advance.

So I reckon you could at least knock a zero off the end of the price their offering if you're equipped and willing to do some basic molecular biology. :)

i take a small sample of my colony, put in a small tube with alcohol, and ship.

On Thursday, 29 December 2016 19:08:02 UTC+1, Roninlaw wrote:

Pick a primer 50 to 100 bp upstream of the gene (20 base pairs) or even better look for a common sequencing primer provided by sequencing company for free. How are you sending the sample? Is it a colony?

Two kinds. If you are sequencing a gene of less than 1000 bp then you would use Sanger sequencing which is read by capillary electrophoresis. That costs about $10. If you are sequencing the whole Genome of E.coli, 5,000,000 bp, then that would cost $100's.

Basically any synthesis company will sell you primers ("oligos"). And they will also do a sequencing run. Make sure to inquire about prizing first. Total costs should be 10 to 20$ plus shipment of your DNA to them.

On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 6:24:33 PM UTC+1, Hugues wrote:

Hi guys,

I have 2 samples of E. Coli for which i would like to have a specific gene sequenced,

where is the cheapest place i can get that done ?

I checked online, there are many, not sure where to start , any recommendations ?

Pick a primer 50 to 100 bp upstream of the gene (20 base pairs) or even better look for a common sequencing primer provided by sequencing company for free. How are you sending the sample? Is it a colony?

Two kinds. If you are sequencing a gene of less than 1000 bp then you would use Sanger sequencing which is read by capillary electrophoresis. That costs about $10. If you are sequencing the whole Genome of E.coli, 5,000,000 bp, then that would cost $100's.

Basically any synthesis company will sell you primers ("oligos"). And they will also do a sequencing run. Make sure to inquire about prizing first. Total costs should be 10 to 20$ plus shipment of your DNA to them.

On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 6:24:33 PM UTC+1, Hugues wrote:

Hi guys,

I have 2 samples of E. Coli for which i would like to have a specific gene sequenced,

where is the cheapest place i can get that done ?

I checked online, there are many, not sure where to start , any recommendations ?

Hey, so I'm currently an undergraduate genetics student and I'd like to do some diy biohacking to really get lots of hands-on experience while I'm studying. At the moment I'm just setting up a basic lab by building some lab equipment based off plans on the internet.

But the thing is: I have ZERO experience with electronics, and I don't know whether the cartridge heater will require too much power from the Arduino board or power supply, and all the explanations I've found on the internet seem to go WAY over my head.

Two kinds. If you are sequencing a gene of less than 1000 bp then you would use Sanger sequencing which is read by capillary electrophoresis. That costs about $10. If you are sequencing the whole Genome of E.coli, 5,000,000 bp, then that would cost $100's.

Basically any synthesis company will sell you primers ("oligos"). And they will also do a sequencing run. Make sure to inquire about prizing first. Total costs should be 10 to 20$ plus shipment of your DNA to them.

On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 6:24:33 PM UTC+1, Hugues wrote:

Hi guys,

I have 2 samples of E. Coli for which i would like to have a specific gene sequenced,

where is the cheapest place i can get that done ?

I checked online, there are many, not sure where to start , any recommendations ?

That quote seems very high. The 10-20 USD price wouldn't include primer design & synthesis. But even taking that into account, this is way too high. DNA isolation costs a few bucks at most for materials.

Two kinds. If you are sequencing a gene of less than 1000 bp then you would use Sanger sequencing which is read by capillary electrophoresis. That costs about $10. If you are sequencing the whole Genome of E.coli, 5,000,000 bp, then that would cost $100's.

Basically any synthesis company will sell you primers ("oligos"). And they will also do a sequencing run. Make sure to inquire about prizing first. Total costs should be 10 to 20$ plus shipment of your DNA to them.

On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 6:24:33 PM UTC+1, Hugues wrote:

Hi guys,

I have 2 samples of E. Coli for which i would like to have a specific gene sequenced,

where is the cheapest place i can get that done ?

I checked online, there are many, not sure where to start , any recommendations ?